The history and practice of Industrial Design in Victoria Australia is my research interest and this blog include posts related to this interest as well as my practice as a designer and design educator.

In Australia, a 2007 study by Access Economics estimated back pain was costing the economy $34.3 billion in lost workplace productivity and treatments.

The emphasis on OH&S is to take preventative measures, such as keeping chairs, desks and computers at the right height.

However, Dr Stephen Jia Wang at Monash, has developed office furniture that will be able to tell the worker whether they are sitting correctly, when it’s time to get up and move around and, even, “inform” your home furniture of how your spine has been coping during the day and to alter your sofa’s comfort settings before your sit down in front of the TV.

Monash University researcher Dr Wang’s current “smart chair” project is expected to be a fully functional prototype as early as 2017.

Director of the Monash University’s International Tangible Interaction Design Lab, Dr Wang says his own back pain – and his expensive search for a good office chair – was the inspiration for what he calls a “pervasive environment simulator” or “the virtual spine”.

“Something needs to be done immediately to ease the negative productivity impact caused by musculoskeletal conditions like debilitating back pain which now ranks with diseases such as cancer, diabetes and heart disease as national health burdens, particularly in industrialised countries,” Dr Wang said.

For Dr Wang it makes a compelling case for a chair that proactively dictates healthy workplace posture.

At this stage, Dr Wang’s test chair still looks like an ordinary office chair with a spaghetti of electrical wires running between a central system and 78 pressure sensors in the chair’s seat and backrest pads. Benefits from the in-depth understanding of spinal health, the finished design will be extremely ergonomic, beautifully designed and wireless.

The sensors in this unique chair detect the varying loads exerted by a person’s back and legs as they sit. This information is logged, analysed and compared with “ideal” spinal positions. Then, after the individual user’s anatomy, usual posture and current problems have been factored in, the central system sends out advisory texts or emails to correct bad posture – not only in the office but also in the home.

Volunteers are now helping test the chair by spending one workday with movement monitors attached to their spines while they sit in the test chair. This provides baseline data that will enable chair sensor data to be calibrated against actual spine positions. In the second phase of the study, the test chair will provide users with feedback, and its effects on users’ sitting habits and posture will be monitored.

Research team member Professor Jenny Keating, from the Monash Department of Physiotherapy, says sitting postures may not be easy to change without sustained feedback: “The chair offers the potential to study posture adaptation in response to individualised feedback. It could provide a system for effective posture re-education that is integrated with our work life, and help us protect our joints from sustained end of range loading, or body configurations that cause pain.”

Dr Wang has filed a PCT (international) patent for the invention, which also won a 2013 Pro Vice-Chancellor’s Interdisciplinary Research (IDR) seed grant. Parallel with clinical trial support from two of Australia’s leading medical service groups, Monash Health and Austin Health, the project is also being supported financially by a Beijing-based architectural engineering firm that expects to be manufacturing the smart chair commercially by 2020.

The U Living - Design for Life store opened recently in Suzhou introducing more than forty global design brands including: Alessi, Magis, Flos, Kartel, Morosso, Herman Miller, and Vitra.

Students from the Master of Industrial Design at the Southeast University-Monash University Joint Graduate School (Suzhou) are now able to access products by designers including: Marc Newson, Ron Arad, Philippe Starck, Marcel Wanders, Karim Rashid, Alvar Aalto, Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec and Mario Bellini.

Friday, 3 July 2015

The first graduation ceremony for graduates from the Monash Art Design and Architecture's Master of Industrial Design at the Southeast University-Monash University Joint Graduate School (Suzhou) was held in Suzhou on Friday June 26th 2015.

About Me

Ian Wong is an industrial designer with over twenty five years of professional practice experience. Ian is Program Director - Master of Industrial Design at MADA Monash University. This double masters degree is delivered at the SouthEast University Monash University Joint Graduate School (Suzhou) in China. Ian has worked previously as design manager for Outerspace Design and Silvan Australia, and lectured also at RMIT and Swinburne Universities. Ian is a councilor of the Design Institute of Australia and President of Melbourne Movement.